Linguistic Musings

It has occurred to me recently that I am not really giving enough exercise to the super-duper specialist skills I developed during my time in University. This is particularly surprising due to my own pedantry on the subject, which is: words.

Clearly I am aware that I have used words in previous entries, and I believe that if I chose to communicate through a more pictographic medium my blog would become significantly less understandable. Of course, having a blog made completely of pictures would, at least, keep trifling ‘Anonymous’-types away, although, arguably, pretty colours may attract more of them.

I have, therefore, decided to outline some of my more recent explorations into lexical nit-picking.

I live in an area that is largely populated by a certain type of person, namely ‘fighters’, or to allot them a title which sounds less dignified ‘people who want a fight’. I don’t really have a problem with people involved in either boxing or ultimate fighting which, while I do think it is stupid, at least takes place between people who are both willing, nay eager, to do injury to one another. My problem lies with people who want a fight. In an environment not cordoned off specifically, even a ramshackle arrangement by two willing individuals is highly likely to encroach upon bystanders, either dragging in further participants, or causing annoyance to the disinterested. This is a pastime enjoyed by absolute bell-ends, and I am also aware of the needless provocation of labelling people in this way. Essentially if you are offended by the last sentence I imagine you’ll want a fight, which is not going to happen.

I will never ever be in a ‘fight’. Should such an occasion arise, I will almost certainly be ‘attacked’, and should I have need to ‘defend myself’, I would still protest vehemently at the resulting fracas being described as a ‘fight’. I am just finicky about distinctions that way, though that will be of little consequence to my bloodied face.

Having made myself a target for aggressive drunkards, I feel I should probably lighten the tone a bit, which I will attempt to do with a short anecdote set in a Bureau de change.

I was in one such establishment, changing British pounds into Canadian dollars, though that is extraneous information, when a woman standing nearby was asked to give her name in order to complete a transaction. Upon readying herself, she declared herself as: Mrs. B. Strange. I was caught short for a moment as I pondered whether this was a joke on her part. It wasn’t. I think if I had such a name, I would give it in full to avoid giggling. I am glad that she is not such a person however, as it caused me a small amount of glee in what was an otherwise glum and rainy day.

Alternatively, if I were the owner/operator of such a name, I would play heavily on the eccentricity, and introduce myself at parties with:

“Yes, I’m Strange, my husband’s Strange, his parents were Strange, and of course, our children are Strange. Apart from my daughter, she married into an Odd family. You should meet her husband, Jonathan Odd, he is very strange.”

I just wish she was an old fashioned news anchor and could finish all her news broadcasts with:

“And remember, be strange.”

I can only hope that her name is Beatrice or Beatrix so that her eventually tedious pun of a name is unavoidable. It is also possible that her husband purposefully only dated people called Beatrice in order to assure the pun would come to pass. If so, he is my hero.

I have recently been noting the practical naming of protective clothing. A fire retardant outfit will protect you from fire, a bulletproof vest protects you from bullets, and a space suit protects you from space. Similarly, fluorescent clothing can protect you from the flu, which is an important thing to bear in mind in the current climate (please note; bearing this in mind will not protect you from bears).

In more serious, yes similarly tedious, observations, I have been taking perverse pleasure in tut-tutting English-Welsh translations. Signs often fail to be accurate, even when they do avoid the mesmerising huff-ups found in Swansea. I find amusement in huge mistakes, immense interest in slightly differing translations.

A sign on a train going into Cardiff reads in English: “Smile! You’re on camera.” It’s Welsh counterpart declares: “Gwenwch! Mae camera yn eich gwylio”. Translated into English, the Welsh phrase literally reads: “Smile! A camera is watching you”. It would be impossible to translate the ‘on camera’ phrase into Welsh directly, as it is an idiom that is not present in the language, and would sound clunky and unnatural, however, the actual Welsh translation is incredibly sinister. The English phrase manages to extract all responsibility from the situation – it is no one’s responsibility that you are on camera, you just are. In the Welsh sign, the camera is personified, and given an eerie sentience, as though your actions on the train are being mechanically followed by a recording gargoyle on a dark purpose.

This cross-language gap is also present in other phrases. In English, the term ‘scarecrow’ is completely functional, what does a scarecrow do? It scares crows. Dissimilarly, the Welsh term for the scarecrow is ‘bwgan brain’. ‘Bwgan’ is a childish term, probably comparable to the English, ‘ghoulie’ or ‘ghostie’, whilst ‘brain’ (which isn’t pronounced like that) means ‘crows’. So essentially it means ‘Crow Monster’. Crow monster, what does it do? Not really sure, I imagine it creeps around at night and kidnaps your children. Welsh is a sinister language.

Despite its flexibility, and vast incorporation of words from other languages, English can, at times, be incredibly unimaginative and uncreative in its implementation. One example of this becomes apparent in contrast to the Welsh term ‘cyfansoddair’. This term is made up on two words: ‘cyfansodd’ (compound) and ‘gair’ (word), which means that not only does the term stand for the creation of one word out of many, it is an example of it. In contrast, English takes the words ‘compound’ and ‘word’ and creates the phrase ‘compound word’. How very boring Mr English Language, I think I will be cancelling my subscription to your magazine.

Although that will render the years I spent studying English Language fair redundant.

Harrumph.

Moth vs Spider

I was in the kitchen whimsically throwing some shapes, triangles and squares – nothing too extravagant, and mixing myself a fruity cordial concoction, when my gaze fell upon an entrancing event.

The window in my kitchen falls onto a small alley created by my house and the house next door, and with the light shining out, attracts all manner of dive-bombing creepies and crawlies. I am not a fan of these kinds of creatures, seeing the bloated otherworldly undercarriage of a flitting moth is not an enjoyable experience, and interrupts my enjoyment of ‘The Electric Version’ by The New Pornographers.

When an area is a veritable thoroughfare for daredevil flying insects, it becomes inhabited by calculating predators looking to gorge on the fooling light-seekers. I have little to no idea how spiders and their ilk know to place their webs and set their traps in these areas, suffice to say, they just know. The tops of lampposts tend to be covered in webs, creating a shuddering insect-based parody of a bridal veil. What are bridal veils if not sticky traps used to ensnare hapless daddy long legs into their clutches in order to be slowly consumed? Eh? EH!? I’m not sure I agree with what I just wrote, but I am pleased that it is, at least, a valid analogy. Cobweb faced harlots.

The kitchen window is one such insect hotspot. As I stood at the sink and nonchalantly span the cold tap, I help my cup underneath the icy flow, the syrupy fluid inside mixing with the water to create a delicious, raspberry beverage. I lifted it to my lips, and savoured its powers of refreshment and its exciting taste. It was then that I witnessed an event, a hideous event that was truly distasteful.

A gloriously bulging moth crashed flippantly against the pane, as though attempting to enthral and entertain me with his frenetic slapstick window-dance, succeeding only in filling me with a vague sense of disgust. The uncontrollable airborne dancing moth jigged in circles, but like a tiny parody Michael Jackson, soon fell afoul of fate.

My eyes, now acclimatised to the landscape of the windowpane, spotted that the corners were coated with a fine webbing, suddenly, I spied a calculating miniscule fiend secreted in the shadows. The moth flipped busily hither and thither until eventually, inevitably, its oversized wing clipped the edge of the web. The spider dove forwards, propelling itself onward with startling speed. Its spindle limbs reached and probed hastily, yet assuredly, in a vision of pure nightmare. In an instant, the octoped was grappling the moth, attempting to drag it fully into the web with its grotesque tendrils.

I gawped on, fascinated and revolted in equal parts. I was caught in a moral quandary: whom do I support? I had no intention of intervening directly in the petty squabbles of the insect kingdom, but equally, I was unwilling to merely gawp on in an objective spirit of inquiry. My personal bias offered me no help, both moths and spiders rate very badly on a list of ‘Things I Want to be Close To’, also scoring highly on a list of ‘Things I Have to Routinely Throw Out of My Room’, coming in at joint second, losing out to ‘Sexy Women’ (ha ha haaaa!).

I soon decided that I would side with the moth, as I felt he was the slight underdog, and I also took into account the fact that he was only flying about innocently, while the spider was viciously attacking him, with an eye to doing an eating of him all up in his belly. Also the moth wins out over the spider in the bedroom (not in a sexy way, although there is a ‘Gnat’s Chuff’ joke in there if you want it Mr. Herring), a moth in my bedroom is likely to elicit a 'dodging head' reaction of annoyance, whereas a spider in my room will fill me with a visceral revulsion and make my skin crawl. I was slightly pleased, then, to see the moth break free and flap tentatively to rest on the back wall of the alley. Its flying seemed impaired slightly due to the scuffle with the spider, and considering a moth’s flight is an uncertain thing at the best of times, I was slightly worried that my celebrations had been premature. My fears then worsened when I saw a scuttling newcomer enter the fray.

The new spider on the back wall was far smaller than the original combatant, and not only because he was physically further away from me. The moth, who’d learnt his lesson, swiftly took flight, to the best of his ability, though he was clearly “hurtin’ bad” as I’m sure they say somewhere in America. To my chagrin, I noticed that the moth’s choice of landing platform was the window, whose very pane it had so recently suffered upon. As I watched helplessly on, I heard phantom strains of Chumbawumba’s ‘I Get Knocked Down’ wailing in my heart.

The moth and the spider clung the window mere centimetres from one another, locked in what certainly was not a stare-out. For the longest time, the two warriors hugged the glass, and nothing happened. After several minutes of tense anticipation, I got bored and left.

Though it makes for an unsatisfying narrative ark, I feel the inherent romanticism of the event is better safeguarded by my having absconded.

So what message can we take from a battle between a moth and a spider? Erm… well, to be honest I feel any message would only apply to you if you were a moth. Or a spider.

What I did notice however is that I enjoyed the face-off between the two insects far more than I enjoyed a film called “Komodo vs Cobra”, which lasted significantly longer and offered far less humanity, even though it had actual human characters in it. I would suggest if you plan on making a 'frightening' film you base it around a moth and a spider. Or a daddy long legs and a granny grey. Although that’s more likely to be a comedy.

Realistically I think a film would be better if it was based on humans, although my moth and spider will always have a special place in my memories. As long as they are on the other side of some thick glass.

Top Ten, Stop Ten: the Second

Well that is a relief.

Almost as though acknowledging that I have had a week where summoning fever-pitch fury has proven difficult, the Top Ten has remained mercifully static. As I have decided is customary, instead of the usual lambasting of popular singles, I will instead provide a gushing recommendation of music I enjoy. A sane person may question why I choose to continue with the self-inflicted slog of weekly reviewing music that I clearly view with distaste, and to them I say: touché. Oh! anonymous inquisitors, how you cut to the quick of things.

Essentially, and hopefully honestly, it is far easier, and safer, to criticise than it is to commend. However, that is far more of an excuse than a reason, and if pushed to give my original, and rather high and mighty reason for beginning this exercise, it was in order to highlight the potentially dangerous use of thoughtless lyrics, as my area of expertise is linguistics, rather than music. I began this endeavour in the hope of unearthing huge reservoirs of ignorance and ill-will coursing below the surface of songs, but as weeks have gone by I have discovered that as a rule the songs are lazy and boring, rather than secretly '–ist' in any way.

While mediocrity and a paucity of ambition are nowhere near as bad as, say, overt sexism or racism, it is still not commendable in what is ostensibly art. So if sometimes the ire I heap upon songs seems disproportionate, remember that I do it for the future, in order to safeguard art, dya get me? Yeah. I am like the music Batman or something. Even with the silly lines after the ‘safeguard art’ sentence I am still not sure whether people will understand that it was a ludicrous joke, so now I have added this blatant line here outlining that I am, perhaps, not taking the end of this paragraph wholly seriously. The first line of the paragraph is valid though, I’m proud of it at least. Why don’t you put it on a poster or something?

In the previous (and only other) of these positive music posts I mentioned that I would give a gushing to Dog Fashion Disco / Polkadot Cadaver, and I am a blogger of my word(s).

Dog Fashion Disco and Polkadot Cadaver will always go together, in my mind at least, as they have much the same line up. The members of DFD chose to change the name of the group after one member decided to give up music, feeling the need, perhaps, to signify this alteration. Despite this, Polkadot is very definitely a stylistic continuation of DFD, so fans of one will almost certainly be fans of the other.

Dog Fashion Disco’s magnum opus, and my first and favourite album of theirs, is certainly Adultery, a dark and nuanced concept album tracking the descent of a man into madness. The album plays like a suspenseful and stylish film noir, which is remarkably conveyed using only the music, especially considering that the iconic visuals are perhaps the most striking aspect of the genre. Every track is a triumph in and of itself, with new ground being broken in each one, showcasing an uncanny mastery of an eclectic assortment of musical styles. The album weaves through driven heavy metal, haunting chanted choral singing, bursts of spoken word, a Johnny Cash pastiche and a manic burst of jarring manic elevator music. What is particularly impressive is that these diverse and very different tracks fit comfortably into the narrative, where in another album it could feel overly jittery. In fact, the stark contrast of the tracks only accentuate the edge of frantic madness that the album is laden with, which often provides a frightening immersion into their characterisation of the madman. Adultery should rank highly amongst the most gripping and masterful albums that never have achieved the acknowledgement they deserve.

Polkadot Cadaver’s debut offering, Purgatory Dance Party, was something of a departure from the full on, immersive, epic nature of Adultery, focusing more on dark comedy, and subverting pop and disco sensibilities in particular. At its best the humour of Polkadot can reach a delightfully sinister darkness, such as in the bleak track Chloroform Girl. The menacing lines “Chloroform girl, how have you been? / Don’t let me catch you sleeping again” are given the tint of eerie madness due to being sung incredibly tenderly over a loosely strummed guitar and xylophone melody that would, with other lyrics, be a song describable only as “lovely”. The lyrics are also incredibly naïve, “You’re only alive because I like you”, with the singer characterised as simple and deranged, and with the addition of a slow and ominously deep bass-line the song is turned into a chilling masterpiece.

Polkadot utilise synth significantly more than the more metal-oriented DFD, but often this does not detract from the pace and force of tracks, with powerful, driven tracks like Pure Bedlam for Halfbreeds and Bring Me the Head of Andy Warhol packing a vigorous punch. Despite the seemingly forceful edge of the music, the sometimes controversial topics the tracks touch on are always dealt with deftly, with tracks on religion, politics and art all treated adroitly.

The music produced by the two outfits is certainly dark and grim, but always coloured by fantastic writing, and a willingness to deal with topics that less courageous artists wouldn’t attempt in their wildest dreams. With a new Polkadot Cadaver album, tentatively titled R. Kelly’s Big Black Spaceship, on the horizon, it certainly would be a good time to enter the wonderfully dark world of Polkadot Cadaver. I would encourage you to ‘enter the fold’, but that both sounds needlessly dubious, and also makes me seem like a humungous horror-poseur.

This is perhaps slightly redundant as I imagine if you managed to reach the end of this description of dark-horror-comedy-synth-metal music then I imagine you aren’t here for pop countdowns, but there we are, a tradition is a tradition. Here is the Top Ten:

10 – Remedy – Little Boots

9 – Get Shaky – Ian Carey Project

8 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)

7 – Beat Again – JLS

6 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

5 – Sweet Dreams – Beyonce

4 – Behind Closed Doors – Peter Andre

3 – Ready for the Weekend – Calvin Harris

2 – Never Leave You – Tinchy Stryder ft Amelle

1 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

The Cheek: Contribution #2

Here is a piece I wrote for The Cheek (Issue #7) about Ricky Gervais. Colourful version can be found at The Cheek.

***

Ricky Gervais is surely the most industrious lazy-man working in the business today.

“I don’t like getting up at 7:30 every morning, it’s ridiculous. Why do we have to start that early, what are we, farmers? It’s the light, put a lamp up.”

But this seemingly slothful musing is highly misleading, as becomes apparent even in a casual perusal of his impressive back-catalogue. It is difficult not to be impressed by his multi-disciplinarity, with forays in radio, television, stand-up, podcasts, children’s books and now film all gaining a widespread following and acclaim.

“I didn't even intend to do what I'm doing now. I think doing something creative is the most important thing to me, and I think it's probably just good for the soul for anyone, whatever it is. You don't have to be a film director—you can do gardening or something—but I think everyone needs to create something.”

Despite his many accomplishments in these various fields, Ricky is perhaps still best known for his original creation, The Office, written with long-time creative partner Stephen Merchant. The trendsetting mockumentary received a huge amount of critical acclaim, as well as attracting a dedicated following and spawning a highly successful and long-running re-imagining for the US, starring Steve Carell. Now an experienced TV writer, with hit show Extras enjoying two successful series (plus specials), Ricky outlines one aspect of particular importance.

“Rewriting is a vitally important part of the process. Most things I see on TV would be twice as good if they had just given it another rewrite. Maybe it's arrogance, ego, lack of judgement or lack of involvement. There are probably great writers out there who you'll never get to hear about because they handed their script over to a bad director or producer. As a writer, you've got to be involved throughout. Woody Allen was so right when he said the best an idea gets is when it's in your head. From then on, it's just a matter of how much you ruin it. But if you're constantly around, it gets ruined less.”

Having taken to comedy comparatively late in the day, and arguably in an unusual order, Ricky then turned to stand-up which, despite some initial trepidation, has also proved incredibly successful.

“I suppose I felt guilty about walking into a great job like the Office, you know? Most comedians slog around for 20 years before they get a part in a sitcom or a chance to write something. I like the romance of doing stand-up. It’s the last bastion of self-censorship outside the novel, and that excites me. I can go onstage and say anything I want. Well, I pretty much do that on the telly as well. I guess I can get away with it because I put forward a good argument.”

His most recent show, the HBO special Out of England received Emmy nominations for Best Variety, Music or Comedy Special, for Best Writing in that same category, and for its picture editing.

“This is particularly special for me, as it is my first Emmy nomination for my stand-up work”.

Ricky begins a national tour of his fourth stand-up show, Science, in the autumn, though where he found enough time to write this alongside other projects is impossible to deduce.

Currently occupying his time is his most recent Stephen Merchant collaboration, the film Cemetery Junction. Set in 1970s Reading, the setting of Gervais’ own childhood, the film details the story of two young men working as clerks at a building society. The premise might not instantly seem a rich seam of comedy, but this is a trend you can see running through all of Ricky’s work, as the office of a paper-production company based in Slough must not have appeared to be the comedy goldmine that it is now considered to be.

Ricky is known for what can only be described as antics and shenanigans on set, often trying to raise a laugh from the crew or cause a cast member to corpse. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the bullying of Robin Ince, which is sometimes included as an unlikely extra in his stand-up DVDs. This fine tradition continues into the current recording, where a moustachioed Karl Pilkington makes an equally unlikely cameo.

“[I] had a dream that I was given millions of pounds to make a Hollywood movie. But I just dressed up my gimp mate like a complete div and laughed till I burst.”

Clearly this is not all he has been doing, with an acting résumé that boasts roles alongside Ralph Fiennes, Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller he has become something of a force in the film world. Though some would say that Ricky suffers of a swollen ego at times, he aims to hold true to his sense integrity.

“I don't care if it fails, honestly. I'd rather have something that's completely mine fail than something succeed that I'm not proud of.”

The Cheek: Contribution #1

Here is a copy of an article I wrote for The Cheek (Issue #7). A shiny version can be found at The Cheek.

****

Thanks to the rising availability of computer generated music it is possible for any talentless banshee to create a grating, repetitive dance track, and more often than not, they do. In the vast mire of commercially available dance headaches it is necessary for a track to have a unique selling point in order to stand out.

Acts used to incorporate a direct plea to have their music played, using attention grabbing titles such as Hey DJ and the less ambiguous Hey DJ (Play That Song). And who could forget the forgettable hit from DJ RCT Ow DJ (You Gonna Play This Song or What Like?).

It is interesting, then, to see Cascada rise to the top of the charts with the track Evacuate the Dancefloor, which does not employ these gimmicky methods. In fact it seems Cascada have utilised schoolyard reverse psychology in order to manufacture heavy rotation of their track, emploring everyone within cacophonous yelping distance to remove themselves from the area reserved for rhythmic motions, or Evacuate the Dancefloor, if you'd prefer.

Odd that a song would describe it's own noise as "like an overdose", the symptoms of which include dizziness, disorientation, nausea, vomiting, and oscillopsia. Having listened to the track I can confirm some side effects, and to be honest I am touched by the band's honest and frank admission. In listening to the track I certainly experienced a degree of nausea.

The singer also claims to have been "infected by the sound". Wikipedia describes an infection as "the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species". So essentially this track is like music aliens invading your brain, in a bad way. This is supported by the following line "stop this beat is killing me". One wonders how such a dangerous track was ever allowed to be made commercially available.

Worryingly the final line in a number of the choruses is "Hey little DJ let the music take me underground". Even overlooking the extremely patronising "little" in that line, it certainly seems that the lyricist of Cascada is harboring self-destructive tendencies. Far be it for me to speak out against the euthanasia of vacuous dance outfits, some sacrifices are hardly sacrifices at all. It is, however, a harmful message to be sending out for the little dance droids. An alternative version of this line advocates burning the dancefloor, which is despicable. There is nothing funny about arson (not unless you remove the last two letters).

So somehow the mystic music charts have ensured that the number one spot is inhabited by the teeth-grinding noise of Cascada. Cue three and a half minutes of footage of a posing tool. Strangely the woman from Cascada looks remarkably like an R.E. teacher I once had, the main difference being a noticable lack of strutting and wailing to a backing track of ear-rupturing dance noise like a public service announcement from the seventh circle of synth hell. Instead, she taught R.E. I preferred this. Unquestionably, the woman from Cascada is attractive, and that is, of course, enough to get to Number One, even pipping the recently deceased Michael Jackson to the post.

What we can learn from this is that you can't cheat your way to the top by using cheap gimmick titles for your songs, or by dying suddenly just before a huge farewell tour. It is also possible that Jacko isn't number one because a consensus wasn't reached about which song to back. There is nothing worse than a disorganised fan-base. Apart from death. Jackson just can't win. I suppose it is some consolation for him that "woo"-filled funk-fest Billie Jean reached number two. It's what he would have wanted, though he probably would have preferred a number one. And not to have died.

Congratulations are in order to Cascada however, they now enjoy their place in an elite group of artists that have achieved Number Ones over the years, their contemporaries include Bob the Builder and Crazy Frog. Truly the highest echelon of musical recognition.

The Problem's Chronic

Yesterday, I completed my trophy collection on Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars. This is the best game I have played this year, and here is for why.

Despite its convoluted name, the game has a simple premise: Let’s play football with cars. This is ‘football’ in the British sense, and ‘cars’ in a very loose sense. In fact, the game goes to great length to define what it means by ‘cars’ in its title, which I need not repeat, as it is written in the opening line (and I call it Football Cars anyway). The initial attraction of this game to me was threefold: 1) it was PS3 exclusive, thus stroking my personal preference elitism, 2) it was download-only, which is THE FUTURE, and 3) it was £8, which is incredibly cheap considering even second-hand games will likely set you back anywhere upwards of £20, and new titles will hit the market for £50 and stay there indefinitely, even though they are stool.

What I usually look for in a game is story, a genuinely good narrative can, for me, excuse many graphical, technical or gameplay blunders. It is therefore unusual that Football Cars has come to rank amongst my favourite games, as it is utterly devoid of plot, there is no story here, or no pretention of one. That is the beauty of it; it is a ‘game’ in the truest sense. It is a standalone competition, a pitting of one players ability against another.

It is strange that a game where you play as a car is easily the most fluid football game I have ever played. Even the most recent Pro Evolution or Fifa titles feel like turgid clunky dross in comparison to a game in which you control, not a human being, but a lump of metal with wheels on. The reason behind this is the physics engine, and the limited, but sufficient, controls that you have. The problem of the ‘actual’ football games is that there are too many ‘moves’ you can do, and yet none of them are actually integrated into the flow of the game, feeling disconnected from everything. Often in those games, two players could clearly run full into one another and not actually meet. This is where Football Cars shines.

Despite being a ‘football’ game, Football Cars plays like a sandbox, where you are given abilities, but you are free to combine them as you choose (or are able to). The controls of the game are fairly basic; accelerate, reverse, handbrake, jump, boost. The art is in the combination, and mastering these combinations, which begin at the mundane, and are at best a joy to behold. Boosting out of a reversed handbrake turn and positioning yourself directly in line with the ball is one of the most empowering feats in modern gaming, able to endow the player with an incomparable sense of flair and cool-dudery.

The game certainly subscribes to the ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ school of thought, and when played for a concerted length of time, will unfold and change your perception of how the game is played. This is especially true if you play online, where any number of players will be more than happy to blow your silly little internet gaming mind. Often the ball will ricochet ponderously high into the air, leaving you stranded below, attempting to gauge when and where it will drop either by tracking its shadow or aiming your camera wildly at the sky. At least, that was the way that I used to deal with those situations. Nothing could prepare me for the first time I witnessed a player who, instead of waiting for the ball to drop, sped from the other side of the pitch, double jumped, and then used his boost to propel himself through the air at the airborne ball, and then flip, propelling the ball downwards into the floor-level goal. It isn’t often that a game can open up a whole new dimension of play using controls you have had at your fingertips all along.

In terms of the physics, they work in much the same way as they do in reality, in a very basic ‘what goes up must come down’ sense. This simplicity works in its favour. The main problem of the Pro Evolutions and Fifas is that they are not honest enough replications of reality. The way the players and the ball react is not an true recreation of how it feels to play football. The sense of uncertainty and creativity is stripped out of those titles, where the possibility of slicing or a ball bouncing unexpectedly off a post is absent, replaced by stiff pre-programmed sequences. Weirdly, Football Cars does contain these elements, and when you see a shot just miss the target, you know it is because of your mis-controlling of the car, a combination of angle and speed, whether you jumped too soon, or boosted too much. In other titles, this complicated issue is boiled down to whether you held down O button for slightly too long and your bar filled up too much and/or the game doesn’t feel like letting you score this time, sorry.

I appreciate that incorporating all the nuances of actual football into a game would be impossibly difficult, which is why the minimalistic representation found in Football Cars is so much more effective. The subtlety of ruling whether a tackle was a foul or not is completely hoisted out of the window, because you are a car. A ‘battle car’ at that. At times, the chaotic rough-necking in Football Cars can be frustrating, where you can be sent hurtling all over the screen for an entire minute from opponents single-mindedly crashing into you, but even this is subject to tactics, where smashing into or destroying an opponent is all well and good, but it can leave you stranded on the wrong end of the pitch with no boost, which is a very good way to lose.

Basically, this entry could be titled ‘A Love Letter to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars’, and I have composed it due to the resurgence of my activity with the game. I was enticed back to its shiny metallic dimension due to a, free, update which brought two new levels into the mix, an old school galleon and a ‘European’ style stadium (with PROPER goals). I then played online for long enough that I stopped losing 10-0 to the obscenely proficient online players, and eventually started winning consistently. This led to me unlocking the vast majority of trophies for the game, trophies being PS3’s lacklustre, though commendable, attempt to ape the 360’s achievement system. Upon checking the parameters of the trophies, the only one I didn’t have was the one that needed me to have completed every ‘Challenge’ with a 5-star rating.

‘Challenge’ sections are the bits I usually despise in games, because, usually, I lack proficiency in a number of the gaming fields, and so having a section where you are forced to play the game in a certain way and then have that style scrutinised is hugely unpleasant. Are you listening Soul Calibur? However, I was determined. And I also had a lot of time on my hands. Which I clearly still do, as now I am blog-wanking about it.

It is strange how the ‘Practise makes perfect’ cliché is so often touted, and yet so rarely put into practice. It is true. Having toiled away on certain challenges which originally seemed impossible and which I eventually mastered, I was filled with a sense of tangible achievement, which is unusual anywhere outside of school-systems. When was the last time you were congratulated for actually having achieved something? The only congratulations the average human receives is for having lived to see another year. Happy Birthday indeed. Here is where I attempt to make a heavy-handed justification for having sunk so many hours into clocking this game.

I’m sure there are a very many people who will feel that having ‘completed’ a video game is hardly an achievement at all, in completing a game, I’ve not really produced or achieved anything of value (although I hear if you fully complete Oblivion you get the cure to cancer and AIDS after the credits). Coming from a social perspective where the highest aim is to give and add to the community around you, my small achievement of having stamped my authority over a fairly niche download-only PS3 exclusive video game basically about playing football with cars, is of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But what of this grand scheme? Pish to the scheme say I! The use of the term ‘scheme’ suggests that there is some path laid out in front of us, or that there is an ultimate, and understood, goal that we as a species are aiming for, which I, personally, object to. My achievement of being proficient at a video game may not be of practical use, such as someone else’s achievement of being proficient at fixing pipes or healing the sick. Neither is it, however, detrimental, as of someone else’s achievement of being proficient at spouting bigotry, inciting hatred or fucking up the economy (check your watch, its ham-handed satire o’clock). Furthermore, if a global controversy were unearthed and the only way to resolve it was to employ a South-Walean gamer to control a video game car via a controller then I know where you’d come knocking, yes indeed.

Essentially, my point is this. My little nothing of an achievement brought pleasure to me, and I don’t really expect it to impress or mean anything to anyone else. It doesn’t have to, my enjoying it is enough. Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is a brilliant game, it is simple, fun and addictive, plus it is possible to listen to podcasts or the iPlayer while you play it, therefore spending your time doubly wisely.

If anyone reading this is thinking that I have wasted my time becoming Esteemed Welsh Grand Master of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and then further wasted my time by writing what is undoubtedly an over-long blog entry, essentially parading around with my metaphorical pants down and with a metaphorical erection singing “Look at me, I am good at a game”, then ponder this Mr or Mrs Wisdom-of-an-Owl: who is the bigger waster of time? Eh? Eh? Me, for having played the game, enjoyed it, gotten up to date on podcasts, kept up with my blog entries (a goal I set myself because I am so in charge of my own destiny thanks), or alternatively; you, for having read this all the way through.

It is clearly you, unless you are Barack Obama and/or Stewart Lee, which you clearly aren’t. Now go turn off the microwave before your spaghetti melts.

*Blog trivia: The title of this entry is a lyric from the Bad Religion song 'Supersonic'. Also, it is apt.

Semi-skimmed Re-shuffle: Top Ten

It’s a bumper edition this week, with 5 new songs gracing the grit-teeth-and-bemoan-state-of-humanity list. Let’s jump straight in.

10 - Remedy – Little Boots

Oh, go easy on her, she’s only Little Boots. This song is like a nagging stubborn headache in the front of your head. It’s filled with mild, turgid pop la-la-laing, laid generously over migraine swells of clunky ugly synth.

We have my all time favourite type of lyric, the lines which walk the line between saying nothing and being so vague as to mean anything you want it to, an example being: ‘move while you’re watching me / dance with the enemy’ - grade-school rhyming couplets for the idiot generation. Ya-hoo. I would rather not move while I’m watching her, by staying still it makes it easier to keep the rifle steady.

But my favourite line from this song is: ‘I can see you stalking like the predator’. This makes me laugh because I like to imagine she is referring to Predator, who is famously hard to see. Equally if she is referring to predators in general, there is a large amount of stalking involved, and being seen in usually not in the predators’ best interest. You lose points for silly-billyery.

9 - Get Shaky – Ian Carey Project

There are many examples of naive lyricism in ‘Get Shaky’, my personal choice is: “baby go crazy / break the rules”. ‘Breaking the rules’ is a huge cliché in music writing, especially when you consider the fact that this song has a video that is shown on the television. The video shows children in school breakdancing in the corridors. At some point breakdancing may have been a defiant artform or a rebellion, however it isn’t anymore. There are many breakdancing championships, and schools that can teach you how to do it, which often undermines the counter-culture, non-conformist, vibe of a movement. Ironically, in order for the video to have been made, the film crew would have had to get permission from 1) the school, 2) the children (if they are children) and 3) the children’s parents. This is where anything on television touting a “break the rules” message is so incredibly insincere and false, because the entire process, from writing the song, recording the song, recording the video to actually getting the video on TV, would require the team to have jumped through so many administrative hoops it hardly embodies a “break the rules” ethos at all. A more direct reason the “break the rules” line doesn’t stand up is the lacklustre delivery of the line, which sounds as though it is sung by an uncaring wretch forcing out a last breath before finally embracing death.

Pop needs to learn a valuable lesson: a drum machine and a skittering synth does not add up to an actual song. If you must insist on attempting a minimalist synth approach, learn something from Susumu Hirasawa beforehand.

4 - Behind Closed Doors – Peter Andre

I was encouraged by the sound of actual instruments at the beginning of the track, but soon I was disappointed. Real instruments? Oh wait, no, I am just being teased by a repeated overdriven guitar loop. Driven electric guitar goes with a tinkly computerised drumbeat and auto-tuned pop aaahings like beans and sick.

The picture chosen for this radio rip track by the YouTube user is Peter standing next to Chris Moyles holding a t-shirt which reads “I’VE JUST BEEN INTERVIEWED BY CHRIS MOYLES” which sounds less like a proud exclamation and more like a sobbing statement given to the police.

Now, Peter Andre is likely enjoying renewed popularity due to the vast coverage of his split with Katie Price / Jordan and so the appearance of the line: “Who’d have known / That our life would be so exposed?” rings slightly hollow because the answer should be: You, Peter. You should have known when you sold the rights to your wedding and filmed documentaries following your every move. Buffoon.

3 - Ready for the Weekend – Calvin Harris

Piano, bass, drums – I was tempted to go easy on this track as the bile in my throat was making it hard to breathe, the track is less aggressive and brain-numbing than the other entries, but I was unable to hold on to my enthusiasm past the intro.

The abundance of leotard clad ‘beauties’ in the video left me empty inside, and the soul-crushing nature of the vacuous line “I put on my shoes and I’m ready for the weekend” is unutterably depressing.

2 - Never Leave You – Tinchy Stryder ft Amelle Berrabah

When given the option of who they would repatriate first; Coolio or Tinchy Stryder, a young female BNP voter recently decided that Mr Stryder would be the first to get the boot. Now, as a rule, I don’t agree with the BNP on any level, and so it worries me that I desire to see the back of Tinchy Stryder. My reason for wanting him gone is different from the BNP, however, as I have no qualms with his not being a member of the British master-race (and what fantastic specimens we are), I have a far more direct complaint, the song is, as I’m sure you expected, awful.

Having clicked a link to an ‘interactive’ video of the song on his website, I was privy to an experience which I’m depressingly sure many people will find ‘nifty’. Run the cursor over the video as it plays and little informational tabs will pop up, telling you what you are pointing at. This was useful for me, as this confirmed my suspicion that the prancing poseur was indeed Tinchy Stryder. I used the pointer to discover that the woman in the video was Amelle Berrabah, who was rumoured to ft in the video, and the white cube carved into a throne is a ‘custom mod chair’. For cynical people it will become quickly apparent that this gimmicky video player is merely a trick to slam further advertising down your face, letting you know that the background is ‘Black Island Studios’, his jeans are ‘Armani Vintage Style Denim’ and his glasses are ‘Louis Vuitton Evidence Sunglasses’. I like to imagine that the glasses are ‘evidence’ in a court case where someone had pulled them off his pouting face and used them to stab him in his pretentious burke gland.

Amusingly, this feature was, at the very least, interesting, and did distract me from the actual song, which is a good thing. The most amusement was garnered, however, when I paused the video and it fell out of sync, meaning that it described Amelle Berrabah’s arse as ‘Barbour Quilted Jacket’. Throughout, Stryder’s clothes are described with advertising spiel, though Amelle’s dress receives no advertisements, and wherever you run the cursor over her it merely sports the tab “Amelle Berrabah”. This technology certainly hints at the eventual crossover of two internet genres, the streaming pop video and the flash dress-up game.

If that ever happens, you will have heard it here first. And it will be horrible.

Round up and go away.

10 – Remedy – Little Boots

9 – Get Shaky – Ian Carey Project

8 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull

7 – Beat Again – JLS

6 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

5 – Sweet Dreams – Beyonce

4 – Behind Closed Doors – Peter Andre

3 – Ready for the Weekend – Calvin Harris

2 – Never Leave You – Tinchy Stryder ft Amelle

1 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

Ghibli with Excitement

The media often cocks up royally, other times it is merely my pedantry that fuels my frustration with it.

There is a piece in the Guardian today discussing how Hayao Miyazaki, and Studio Ghibli more generally, haven’t been able to achieve the same gargantuan successes they have had all over the world, in America. This comes with the impending American release of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Ghibli’s newest offering. The statistics they provide suggest that the films of Ghibli still make millions of dollars in cinema revenue, but in the bloated and obscene industry of blockbuster films, making millions is laughable. A film has to break the hundreds of millions for anyone to be in the least interested, and Ghibli do this regularly, if the article is correct, in Japan and Europe, just not in America.

Now part of the reason that Japanese anime in general might not make so much money in America is because of the underground masses of fansubbers that exist, meaning that the vast millions upon millions of fans of anime in the English speaking world will have seen the film well before its release. The attractiveness of this setup is that you would get to experience the film, free (though illegally, remember) with the original Japanese cast, with subtitles provided lovingly, and therefore more reliably, by fans, rather than by paid subbers who, if history is any judge, either make hideous mistakes and / or just don’t give a shit. One such example is the All Your Base phenomenon which was one of the very first internet memes, ah, I remember you fondly. Similarly, though a number of commendable studios are making a stand against this, dubs have a habit of being phlegm-inducingly awful. I recently watched a series where, in the Japanese version, a character had a high, childish voice, and in the American version, the same character’s speech was throaty and grizzled. Overlooking the fact that the American acting was also awful, that is casting at its very worst, either incompetent or completely uncaring. Having said that, with the successes of Disney / Pixar and animated medium as a whole, “proper” actors are more likely to take on voice roles, though America has its share of good voice actors, my personal favourites being Joe DiMaggio (Bender, Marcus Fenix, Wakka) and Vic Mignogna (Edward Elric, Tamaki Suou, Madarame Ikkaku). This is probably where I reveal that I have met Vic Mignogna, who is a lovely man.

For some insane reason certain American studios feel it necessary to cut and re-edit entire films, and in so doing, turn them into so much arse water. One example of this is Casshan, edited by an American studio from a four part OVA into a feature length film, which necessitated an upheaval of 1) the order of scenes, 2) the pacing of the entire piece and 3) the fucking story. I was relieved to find that the original 4 episodes are on the DVD in their original form, as the American version, roughly 2 minutes in, after attempting to build up tension and intrigue as to the whereabouts of the titular Casshan, had him reveal himself with the intelligence insulting line “I AM CASSHAN!”

Miyazaki received the same treatment when he brought early titles to America, notably Nausicaa Valley of the Wind, which in its original form is a sci-fi masterpiece. It was felt that it was ruined when an American studio fucked around with it and released it to the American public, and further English speaking world, as See, Isn’t That Better Now We’ve Rubbed Our Dicks on the Work of a Genius? Luckily, the original Nausicaa was properly released years later, in 2005. People learnt to stop fucking with Ghibli films after an American editor / burke suggested editing Princess Mononoke to make it more marketable for an American audience. Miyazaki sent a katana to the studio with a written message on it saying “No cuts”. And that is why Hayao Miyazaki is a million times more hardcore than Quentin Tarantino. A proper katana. But that is to be expected from a man whose name sounds like something you would shout as you slashed someone. Hayao!

Now I am not an American, but as a British individual whose first language is English, I feel I am lumped in when editors feel they have to tone down something to make it more marketable. I am insulted by this, as though the editors are saying “Look, the Japanese right, they are fucking mad as a million Mad Hatters, and clever to boot. We’re going to tone down this film so you are able to understand it, because you are well stupid aren’t you? Yes you are! Yes you are!” In reality, the editors themselves simply don’t understand it. Which perhaps is understandable, they aren’t artists, they aren’t working closely to the individuals who originally imagined the piece, it would be difficult to tap into the same creative spring. However, this doesn’t give them the right to arse around with it and make it a billion times worse.

You shouldn’t get an editor saying “Hay, those cubes are cool as fuck, but look here Picasso, it just isn’t marketable”.

I don’t think you should dumb things down for an audience, it just breeds laziness and stupidity. As comedian Stewart Lee said: “The jokes are in there, some of you are just going to have to raise your game”. To give an inappropriately hubristic exemplum; I performed at an open mic night yesterday, and when I got off an old man congratulated me, but told me that my material was “almost too clever”. While it is lovely to have your ego stroked by an old man (and only my ego, please), I don’t want to feel as though the British public are unable to keep up with my jokes. They really aren’t that clever. And neither are my jokes! (hur hur hur).

The piece in the Guardian says that Ghibli have recruited big names to voice act in the English version of the film, in order to widen the appeal. It certainly is true, and a good thing, with people like Liam Neeson acting in it, though I imagine I will have to grit my teeth through the yelpings of a knock-off Jonas and Miley Cyrus’ brother. But the article makes it sound as though this is a new strategy, where, in reality, Ghibli have been able to attract top class acting for ages, with the re-release of Nausicaa starring Patrick Stewart, Uma Thurman, Shia LeBeouf and Luke Skywalker.

In the comment section of the Guardian piece there are a number of people who share my views, with some people suggesting also that they look forward to seeing it in cinema. I doubt it will make it to screens here in Wales, though if I am wrong, I will be there.

My main gripe with the entire importing process is the underlying belief that because it is from Japan it is kooky and mad and we won’t understand. This is highlighted by people who believe that Japan is a crazy place, and everyone there is a mental. It is short-sightedness on the part of individuals who believe this, the only part of Japanese culture the English speaking world are shown is the “panties-in-a-vending-machine” and “crazy gameshow” side of things, overlooking the fact that those things are likely viewed as mad over there. I am not arguing that there are not differences between English language cultures and the Japanese, just that the differences are played upon hugely and as such they are exaggerated. It is the same with any culture that we have limited knowledge, and therefore understanding, of. Everyone in Russia wears a big furry hat and does Cossack dances while chugging on vodka, everyone in France wanders around in a stripy black and white top and a beret smoking wistfully, and everyone in Africa is starving. This we know, because they are stereotypes, and it is easier to believe them than view people as human beings. You never know when you might have to go to war with them after all, and it is far easier to kill stereotypes than human beings, as any propaganda machine won’t tell you.

To refer back to the main topic of the Guardian piece, and provide a structural end point for what has been a messy and rambling entry: I look forward to seeing Ponyo by the Cliff by the Sea. Ghibli have been responsible for some amazing stories over the years, told beautifully. I am not an overly emotional viewer, but the ending of Only Yesterday had me struggling to breathe, as I had forgotten how my face and throat worked in my attempts to not cry.

Here’s an additional piece of blog trivia for you as an extra as well: it was the Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart that made me start taking writing far more seriously. Lucky you, eh?

Top Ten, or perhaps, Stop Ten.

The only changes in the Top Ten this week are small jostlings by last week’s 10, so rather than any ‘interesting’ new entries we have a new number one, but it has been in the 10 anyway and I have already said what I have to say about it. The track is inane, though that should go without saying, since it is in the list at all.

So, rather than another entry full of party-pooping posing as criticism, I will talk about some music that I like, hopefully making some valid, or at least interesting, points along the way.

Better than listening to tracks on your music playing device of choice, it is, surely, always preferable to experience them live. I took this to be a firm and understood truth, however, having recently attended a live event, it turns out that a very many people disagree. This became apparent due to the disheartening lack of people in the audience. Standing at the front of a handful of people watching a 4-man punk outfit play to a completely still room ranks among the music-tragedies of recent years. Yes, more tragic than the death of that Jackson bloke, whoever he was.

Perhaps the popularity of pop music means that people are less likely to come to live events, for, as everyone knows, pop music cannot be performed live, as in that context, pop music sounds even more like the gutter-drivel it is, since it is more difficult to cover the inherent arse-puddle of noise with futuristic / 80s whoops and whirls. Or maybe people just don’t think music is real music unless Simon Cowell is there to bestow the mantle of goodness upon it. If you are one of the people who believe in the ‘brilliance’ of the Got Talent / Factor / Idol format then you are a bell end, and I suggest you retreat into your proverbial foreskin before you are crunched on by the unforgiving teeth of the revengeful hooker of actual music.

I understand that it is perhaps counter-productive to describe, what I think is, good music as a hooker, especially since I am now going to talk about bands I think are good, who may believe I am calling them hookers. I am not. They are awesome. The bands, not hookers. Do hookers read blogs? Answers on a postcard please.

Luckily for live music, the night I was describing previously was merely slow getting going, and having to compete with two festivals in the city (Cardiff) it is perhaps amazing that there was such a crowd at all. The second band to take the stage was Cardiff-based ska wonders Dirty Revolution. The crowd began swelling even as the stage was being prepped, suggesting that they are already in possession of a dedicated fan-base. Their set was filled with fun skank-along tunes that were hugely enjoyable as well catchy. After all, there’s no good having a tune in your head if it is going to drive you insane. You know who you are, Beyonk.

On top of the catchy tunes the lyrics and vocal melodies were clever and well crafted, which is, unfortunately, a novelty in modern music, or maybe I am just a pretentious snob. I am, but I am also correct. Always.

The most miraculous effect of Dirty Revolution was their ability to get the room dancing, especially bearing in mind that the room was, at best, sparsely populated, this was truly a colossal achievement. Perhaps it was their novel use of what I must assume is some kind of melodica-esque device which is used occasionally in the stead of a more traditional horn-section. Oddly, for a device that looks for all the world like a toy, the sound carries clearly and adds immensely to the proceedings. Basically, if you enjoy bands on the reggae / ska / punk spectrum, give them a listen on their page, or, better still, go and see them live.

We’ll move on now to a band that I have not seen live, but that has managed, over time, to enmesh itself more completely in my psyche. This particular band is the extremely difficult to find Bôa, who are not helped by the abundance of other acts named Boa. These include; BoA, a Korean singer; BOA, a Croatian group; Boa, a Russian group; and Phillip Boa, a German musician. I am not talking about these. I am talking about the criminally undervalued British indie-rock group Bôa. Annoyingly, I am unable to discover a website or a MySpace site of theirs, so I am going to have to resort to other methods. Bôa are best known for their song Duvet, due to it being used as the opening theme for the anime Serial Experiments Lain, which is worthy of the song. However, this song, and the acoustic version, is where the widespread appreciation of Bôa stops, which, in my sensationalist mind, is an unforgivable shame. I spent a long time scouring around for their two better-publicised / most recent albums Get There and Twilight, one of which (Get There) has now been put up on iTunes. In order to find it you’ll have to type in ‘boa uk’ rather than using the bands actual spelling, which doesn’t help with the confusion.

Bôa are the gods of bluesy indie rock in my world, and it is a pity they aren’t more widely appreciated. Wikipedia, for what it is worth, puts their 'years active' as 1993 – present, which suggests that I still may get to see them live at some point, but my hope at the moment must be that they are on hiatus, rather than split up. I fear the day where I will have to refer to them as the now-defunct Bôa. Their lead singer, Jasmine Rodgers, seems to be focusing on a solo-acoustic project, which is also well worth a listen.

I have mentioned The Cribs before, who, by now, almost go without mentioning, and have a new album pending, which I am awaiting eagerly. I was also planning on talking about Polkadot Cadaver, and their previous incarnation Dog Fashion Disco, but I will leave this entry to the two British bands, rather than inundate a single blog with too many positive vibes.

Find below, the ‘Top Ten’ as it stands this week. Needless to say, not a single track can hold a candle to either Dirty Revolution or Bôa*.

10 – Poppiholla – Chicane

9 – When Love Takes Over – David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland

8 – Paparazzi – Lady Gaga

7 – Bulletproof – La Roux

6 – Sweet Dreams – Beyonce

5 – Evacuate the Dancefloor – Cascada

4 – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull

3 – Supernova – Mr Hudson ft Kanye West

2 – Beat Again – JLS

1 – I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

*In my opinion. But what other opinion counts? Yours? Not on my page.

Local People: An Examination

Felicitous greetings, from whichever glorious corner of the world you hail.

In my locale, we are used to the interminable drudgery of heavy overcast grey, and the knowledge that if you go outside, you will most definitely get wet. Imagine my surprise therefore, to discover that it actually does look like summer today.

You’d think that would in some way placate my days and save me from ongoing tedium, and you would be completely, 100% wrong. There’s nothing quite like a street thronged with people to bring to the surface a healthy hatred for everyone, tinged with the risk of slight genocide. Seeing the hulking lumps of thoughtless flesh flump around the place, sometimes fisting pasties into their mouths or attempting communication with one another, is inherently depressing, nauseating and infuriating. Ooh, enough adjectives for you? Leave me alone.

Some examples of ennui-inducing public behaviour:

A parcel was meant to be delivered to my house today, I know because we received a slip through the door, from the postman, notifying us that he had attempted to post it. However, this slip was a lie. There has been three people in the house all day, one of whom is sat less than a metre away from the front door. Upon hearing a knock from the postman (who for some reason known only to him hadn’t rung the doorbell, which is there for a reason, no?) this individual went to answer the door. This is the correct thing to do. She found at the door that it had not been a knock, as she had assumed, but that this slip had been posted instead. She quickly reached for the key, unlocked the door, and stepped out onto the street in the hopes of stopping the postman and reclaiming the package there and then. However the postman was already doing unto Sebastian Coe down the street, without a parcel. The sharp among you will have realised that in order for this to be the case, the postman will have had to fill the sheet in his car, before even attempting to deliver the parcel. This is infuriating for me for a number of reasons:

1. There were three people in the house to accept the parcel.

2. It shouldn’t have needed a signature: POST IT THROUGH THE LETTERBOX.

3. IT WAS MY PARCEL!

4. It was his JOB to deliver it and he couldn’t be arsed.

Regardless, living in a house which receives parcels often enough, we are familiar with not being in to receive them, since members of the household work in the day, and others work in the night and so are in the house but dead to the world. So we went on our way, several hours later, to reclaim the parcel from the Post Office depot.

Now I don’t know if the Post Office only recruits from the Homo Erectus branch of human evolution, but it can be safely assumed that the man at reception that day most certainly was an example of the now-extinct variety. I gave him my most winning “Give Me My Fucking Parcel” smile, and he dutifully took the reclaim slip from me. And here is where the ponderous thing happened.

The employee look at the slip in his hand with complete incomprehension, as though I had placed an object there that he had never encountered before. The sort of reaction I would have expected had I, instead of passing him the slip, put a scoop of ice-cream and a USB lead in his hands. He poked at it for a while, wearing the grimace of a lost chimp, eventually telling me that I would be unable to pick the parcel up until tomorrow. His lack of movement throughout suggested that he would not have moved to get the parcel, regardless of how many hours ago it had been delivered. He took great pains to finger the “24” on the back of the slip, indicating that I am an utter dolt for attempting to reclaim the package on the same day it was supposed to be delivered, despite the fact that I have done it on many other occasions. Maybe he was just intimidated by the appearance of someone who takes the delivery of parcels slightly more professionally than anyone on call for the Post Office on this day.

On the drive home, we were forced to stop the car, due to the presence of the chubfaced goggling progeny of the streetpeople on the road. There is nothing quite as depressing as seeing a vacuous saggy faced oik standing blankly in the middle of the road with a football under their arm as if silently asking the forces of science to prove to them that they are unable to withstand the impact of a car. Most depressing as it is possibly the closest I will ever come to seeing into a direct portal to my own childhood.

I also decided to go outside for fear that I had breathed all of the oxygen in the house and I was now merely attempting to live off the carbon dioxide that I had breathed out. Having few destinations of interest in the little town I am currently stuck in, I went for the high-voltage excitement, roller-coaster mania of a trip to the shop, and then Chinese. What frightens me about my local Chinese shop is that they know who I am there, which may provide insight into why I spent my childhood as a larger child. This, however, pales into insignificance when set against my fear of almost anyone in the local vicinity. I live in a town populated by grizzled and brainless thugs, beanpole gelled apparitions and aggressive greasy slags (both male and female). I am able to write that here with no fear, as anyone capable of using the internet in order to find this blog is automatically disqualified from any of those categories, as the sort of people I’m talking about think an ‘internet’ is the place you keep the rats you’ve fished out of the river before you put them in the cage in the kitchen.

What frightens me the most about the people from these categories is the sense of passive-aggressive bonhomie they exude, they all seem to be living their lives half an inch from smashing someone’s face in, or alternatively, having their faces smashed in. They also insist on ‘avin a chat with you if they’re bored. Luckily for me, there were enough of them in the Chinese take away to ensure that they would talk amongst their track-suited, paint-speck-smeared selves rather than amuse themselves with a long haired, bearded man. The lack of self-awareness became frighteningly apparent as the ‘conversation’ continued. One man, let’s call him Dan-o, was talking to another bloke, who for this retelling we will call Dean-o. Their conversation focused on Dean-o’s son, who will remain nameless, and the fact that Dean-o had managed to get him working with him, so that his son at least had some money coming in. Dan-o said to Dean-o: “How is he finding it?” to which Dean-o replied: “He finds it boring”. From passive eavesdropping earlier on I was in the knowledge that both Dean-o and his son were working in a factory. Dan-o then came out with possibly the most honest or stupid thing he will probably ever say: “Bored? Well beggars can’t be choosers.”

Dan-o quickly moved the conversation elsewhere, as I am sure that he was aware that in his statement he had labelled both Dean-o and his son as “beggars”, which, while I’m not a huge fan of factory work, I think is a bit fucking harsh. Especially seeming as Dan-o was the one wearing ancient patched spectacles, ill fitting everything and was covered in a fine layer of paint spatters. But I mean that is the height of fashion in this area, especially when going to order food. In public.

As Dean-o later received his food and left, handing pleasant goodbye’s to all involved, Dan-o turned to a different acquaintance, Jon-o, and starting laying into Dean-o. Now I thought this was harsh, as I’m sure you will agree, since I have built Dean-o up to be the more empathetic character. Again, Dan-o reached into his bag of ignorance to slam Dan-o about being overweight, with the line “Yeah well, he doesn’t have to cook for himself very much”.

From what I can make out of this, he was implying that Dean-o often ate take away, which was why he was overweight. He said this whilst in a Chinese take away, where he was ordering Chinese take away, talking to a man who was also ordering Chinese take away, in front of a group of people who were all waiting for their Chinese take away to arrive. That is the shell-suit calling the pebble-dash chavvy.

There is an age, I believe it is around 4 or 5 years – but I am likely incorrect, where it is thought that children become aware of themselves, of their existence. This self-awareness is hugely lacking in this area of the world, perhaps there is an evil local GP who puts a chip in children’s heads in order to stop that facet developing. It would explain why, once, when walking down the street, a guy shouted at me “Why are you looking in through my window”. To which I replied “You have put a poster in it”.

The Chinese was nice though, thanks for asking.